WHY THEY DIDN’T STORM PLANE

Press, 30 April 1988, Page 21

WHY THEY DIDN’T STORM PLANE

‘lt would have been a certain recipe for carnage. This soil of rescue has never been tried before on a jumbo jet.’

By an “Observer” newspaper team of JOHN MERRITT in Larnaca, SHYAM BHAj TIA (Algiers), SIMON DE BRUXELLES | (Kuwait), and COLIN SMITH and FARZAD BAZOFT in London.

No plan existed to storm Kuwait Airways flight KU22 during its 90-hour stay in Cyprus as its! hijackers threatened to kill hostages on board if 17 militants jailed in Kuwait for bomb attacks were not released.

While two bodies tumbled to the tarmac at Larnaca airport, the Greek Cypriots asked their friends what they should do: to storm or not to storm? They were told they had better keep talking. A rescue operation was far too risky for the hostages. I "It would have been a certain

recipe for carnage," said George lacovou, the Cypriot Foreign ; Minister, in an interview with the "Observer” newspaper. “We were advised that this sort jof rescue operation had never been done before on a jumbo jet. The case was very strongly made for I us that it could not be done I xyithout high risk to the passengers. We had contact with t’wo | . friendly governments in Europe

on this matter.” I He. declined to identify these governments, but senior officials in both the Cyprus foreign ministry and in the police, who command a unit which has been Extensively trained to deal with aircraft hijackers, have confirmed that the West Germans

and the British were asked if a rescue was feasible. An assessment was made on the spot and the Cypriots insist that both said ho. i An Israeli expert who was also at Larnaca was apparently of the same opinion.

“It does not surprise me. A 747

is one of the most difficult Aircraft in the world to storm,” (said Paul Wilson, clerk to . the London-based Guild of Air Pilots, (who was a Royal Air Force pilot |for 20 years. "All entrances are well up off

the ground. You would have to creep up on it in the dead of night, get up to those exits -and then blow the doors off with small charges of plastic explosive.” ; . ' ! !■ ' ■' ■ ! It would then have been necessary to enter at least six of the eight exits simultaneously including the cockpit level exit for the upper deck that Kuwait Airways reserves for its first class passengers on( the Bangkok-Kuwait route. i I ' i 1

’Most of the experts then seem to favour .the use of the stun grenades employed by the two s]a.S. ’men with (the German GS9 commandoos who rescued 86 hostages from a hijacked Lbfthansa 737 at Mogadishu in October, 1977. But this was the only entirely successful storming of a hijacked aircraft. At En-I tebbe, Uganda, the Israelis. res-

Action Unit, the anti-terrorist squad, were gathered. Akis Fantis, the Government spokesman, explained it away as a firework. It is the Greek Cypriot habit to celebrate the Orthodox Easter, which has just passed, by setting off bangers. But two independent sources in Cyprus admitted that the cause was the accidential detonation of a small charge of plastic explosive — exactly the sort of thing that might have been used for blowing open a door. Despite their evident experience and fine planning, the hijackers undoubtedly feared that the (aircraft would be stormed. Hence their shrill attack on Margaret Thatcher, who was invited to put herself into an old folk’s home, following press speculation that the S.A.S. were about to go in. The hijackers claimed to have wired explosive to the doors and hostages confirmed seeing reddish ( coloured sticks joined by electrical flex on the exits. Almost ail the outsiders who have dealt with ( them have been impressed by the "professionalism" of the hijackers. Takis Telenis, Senjor Air (Traffic Control officer at Larnaca, has described them as “a different, breed” and famL liarj with every ■ technical detail of the aircraft. Dr- John Potter, a former Ministry, of Defence psychologist specialising in hostages, and now a lecturer at Plymouth ( Polytechnic thinks they were been especially clever in their use of deadlines.

“They would threaten to execute a hostage in half an hour, then extend the deadline, then suddenly commit the act. That was very disorientating for the negotiator:” The second killing ended any hope of a peaceful solution to the hijack in Cyprus.

It cameras a bolt from the blue at probably the most optimistic

U I 1 ■ • : I stage of (the hosi ages’ ordeal. The night (before the hijackers themselves tiad offered to rielease 34 of their( ers in return for enough ( fuel t<s take j them to Beirut despite (the warning shots the Syrians bad fired at the aircraft, when- it attempted to land (here the ’.week! before. This would have left 17 hostages on

cued the passengers from an airport building. I , ' ,|j i One of the main reasons for victory at Mogadishu was the relatively small size; of the' 737; This not only meant that the effect of the stun grenades was particularly devastating but also that the four . terrorists were bunched up. Only one survived.l A 747, even one like the hijacked aircraft with at least a third of its fuselage taken up by freigt, is much wider and bigger. The terrorists were unlikely to be bunched and the effect of stun grenades would be much reduced. The Cypriot Special Police Commando does have a hijack unit, trained by GS9 in West Germany using Cyprus Airways jets. But they have ;been unable to practise oh jumbos because the island’s airline does not fly them. > j Nonetheless, it seems that the police commandos surrounding the hijacked 747 at Larnaca were equipped for a rescue attempt had the terrorists 1 speeded up their “slow massacre" of its passengers. ' I ' ■ . ' Four hours before the jet soared away to Algiers, and two hours before the j 12 hostages were released, a small explosive was heard in the jvicinity of a hangar where about 30 commandos ; of the Mobile Immediate

board — exactly the same number as the Shi'ite'prisoners held in Kuwait. ( Both the Cypriots and , the Palestine Liberation Organisation, who were then! the main mediators, were (convinced that this was the breakthrough. The terrorists’ only other demand was that the P.L.O. leader, i

Yasser Arafat, should obtain a reprieve for the three of the 17 who have been sentenced to death. At 2.30 a.m. on Monday, April 11. the hijackers were heard wishing the control tower a very' good night’s sleep. But when daylight came the hijackers performed an inexplicable about-

turn saying they would not be seen as weak! and hesitating. Within hours the second murdered passenger, a 20-year-old Kuwaiti fireman, hit the tarmac. This led to Yasser Arafat’s outburst against the hijackers at a press conference in Kuwait and accusations that this mercurial change of mind had come about

because they were in direct contact with hidden masters in either Iran or the Lebanon. (The hijackers themselves offered the

unconvincing explanation that they had been advised by a Kuw-aiti lawyer among the hostages that it was | impossible to reprieve the sentences.) • In Nicosia, Mr’ lacovou, the

Conjecture arose at one stage during the 16-day hijack of a jumbo jet by a | group of pro-Iranian Muslim I fundamentalists that it was about to be stormed on the ground. Gunmen ’ seized the craft on a flight between Bangkok and Kuwait. They forced it to land at Mashdad, in northeast Iran, then Larnaca, Cyprus, with batches of passengers being released. The seven crew and remaining 31 passengers were released in Algiers on April 20 in a I deal with authorities that also allowed the eight hijackers to go free. 5 I Foreign Minister, told the “Observer": "The hijackers said, ‘We will keep 17. We will release 34 and then we will have fuel.’ They volunteered it. That was the optimistic stage. The following day they said we also want the full release of the three prisoners in Kuwait — the three under sentence of death — or they would not deal. They were not interested in only commuting the sentences.”

The Cypriot authorities think that the terrorists were either receiving coded messages in the normal programmes put out by Cypriot radio — the way the 8.8. C. sent messages to the French resistance — or over the VHF radio always installed in aircraft flying Far ! Eastern routes. They dismiss the notion that the terrorists were at any time having two-way radio conversations with their backers.

Cyprus, home of 9th Signals Regiment at the British base at Dhekelia, is the eavesdropping centre of the Middlel East and one of the most important gatherers for G.C.H.Q. at Cheltenham. Any such transmissions would have been monitored; and code-breaking is G.C.H.Q.’s speciality. | . I “I asked our experts to monitor all transmissions,” said Mr lacovou, “and we couldn’t find any transmissions from the plane. But it appears very strongly that they had outside guidance.’’ ’ j Kuwait, which supports Iraq in the Gulf War, made| no bones about the fact that (it thought Iran was behind the hijack despite bitter denials from Teheran. Released hostages have said that at( least two terrorists boarded the plane in 1 Mashhad, Iran. -|| j Some have insisted (hat at first the hijackers had only pistols, but after Mashhad they had submachine guns. An eyewitness in Mashhad thinks the extra arms and men went on as part of a medical team headed by Dr Nader Ghassemi, the same man who examined the passengers on the hijacked Kuwaiti (jet brought to Teheran in 1984. I

Since the kidnapping of the Archbishop; of Canterbury’s special envoy, Terry) Waite, the S.A.S. appears to have maintained a permanent presence in Cyprus. They are there in case what intelligence circles call "a window of opportunity” presents itself to rescue Western hostages, particularly the three Britons. The hijackers were almost certainly a mixture of Lebanese and southern. Iraqi Shi’ite. Their friends in Lebanon threatened to murder their hostages if any action was taken 1 against the terrorists. Whether, 'despite the difficulties a 747 presents, the Cypriots , would have been advised jnot to storm had the Lebanese hostages not existed or the 22 Britons still been on board remains a moot point.